Slain Muslim Feminist Writer Honoured

By Nadire Mater, IPS, 6 March 2000

ISTANBUL, Mar 6 (IPS) - Practising feminism and criticising the
established religion in an Islamist society can literally result in
death as slain feminist writer, Konca Kuris, tragically discovered.

Kuris, who was tortured and slain, allegedly by Hizbollah, for her
interpretation of Islam from a modern feminist point of view is one of
three women to be honoured by International Pen, Writers in Prison
Committee (WiPC) in commemoration of International Womens Day on Wed.

The others are Flora Brovina of Kosovo, currently detained in Serbia
and Irene Fernandez of Malaysia, currently on trial. All three are
being honoured for their work in campaigning for women's rights in
their own communities and beyond.

Following her disappearance over a year ago, Kuris' brutally
tortured body was exhumed, along with scores of other alleged
Hizbollah victims, at one of the organisation's clandestine hide-
outs in Jan.

Allegedly a former Hizbollah affiliate and the only reported woman
victim of the organisation so far, the 39-year-old mother of five had
become a target of Islamists for her outspoken views on women in
Islam.

Personally a devout Muslim and one of the organisation's early
supporters, Kuris however broke ties with Hizbollah, and devoted
herself to a highly libertarian interpretation of the Koranic
principles.

Through her books, articles, lectures and television appearances,
Kuris amassed a following of both secularist and Muslim women. She
argued that male scholars had, over the centuries, twisted the essence
of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, to finally legitimise women's
subjectivity by men.

First of all, I, as a Muslim woman, demand my rights, Kuris had
written in one of her manifestos to Islamist women. Until now, all
interpretations of the Koran have been made by men in a male-dominated
society so as to reach to a point of crude falsification of the
Koran's message in terms of the status of women.

Kuris proposed a historical approach to Koran's interpretations:
We should be aware of the social conditions of the local
surroundings at the time when the Holy Book was introduced, she
said.

We are at a very different period in gender relationships than it
was during the time of Koran's introduction, she argued.

Kuris fearlessly led heated debates around her views but she was also
confronted by a series of death threats. However she refused to be
daunted and instead stepped up on her radical criticisms of dogmatic
interpretations of the Koran.

A month after a televised interview on Jun 16, 1998 when she
confronted the established legend that women are created from
Adam's rib Kuris was kidnapped from in front of her home in the
south city of Mersin.

Prior to the kidnapping Kuris had issued a statement in which she had
denounced 'those with antiquated minds, who accused her' of
being anti-God.

Her whereabouts were never discovered until July 20, 1999 when a
report in the Turkish media quoted a Hizbollah press release stating
that that Kuris had been kidnapped by the organisation.

Konca Kuris, an advocate of secularism and an enemy of Islam, is
kidnapped and interrogated by Hizbollah fighters. She has led to
confusion and poisoned the Muslims with her ideas. This is why she
deserved death, the group claimed.

Yet, her case remained unresolved until her body was exhumed on Jan
22, from a shallow grave in Konya, about 350 kilometers to the
northwest of Mersin.

Her highly emotional funeral ceremony brought together feminists and
women's rights defenders from every shade of the political
ideological spectrum, including the Islamists. Not even death was able
to silence this remarkable woman and her funeral provided a platform
for women to continue with her work and challenge the male-dominated
Islamic rituals.

The women, including Kuris's own daughter, refused to obey the
traditional procedures during the funeral ceremony and to stand behind
the men.

They insisted on praying in the front row along with the men and
according to sources this was not allowed.

She stood up for women, spoke in the name of women, wrote
Yaprak Zihnioglu, a prominent feminist figure, in her monthly
'Pazartesi' column.

'She strove for 'feminising' Islam. And her assassination
has been designed as sort of a deadly warning for those who would
follow on her footsteps.

In her testament she had called the women to rally at her funeral
ceremony, yet even her last will had been forcibly barred from
implementation by fundamentalists, Zihnioglu wrote.

Her aunt, Nejla Olcer, chairperson of the Independent Women
Association, describes Kuris as a vivid, brave, determined,
progressive and idealistic woman with a very critical mind.

The daughter of a provincial, urban middle class family Kuris was
brought up in a secular environment and she had leftist inclinations
until she fell in love with an islamist young man and married him at
the age of 17.

In her new family she had to face extreme pressure and violence to
adopt the islamic way of life and later was forced to join the
Nakshibandi order with which her husband and in-laws were affiliated.

Yet, she detached herself from the order as soon as she recognised
that their principles contradicted her understanding of Islamic
religion.

Kuris in 1996 joined the Hizbollah and visited Iran, but returned
disillusioned of the organisation, futher convinced of the anti-women
nature of their interpretation of Islam.

By 1997, Kuris had joined a new organisation, a regrouping of women of
different shades around the Independent Women Association in her
hometown Mersin.

In the association, Kuris gained nationwide attention for her
criticism of orthodox male-dominated interpretation of Islam, and also
for her efforts to set-up women's shelter's to protect women
from domestic violence. She was also distinguished for her active
participation in peace campaigns for a solution to the Kurdish
Question.

Kuris's efforts have been valued not only by secularist women
already critical of Islam but also by Muslim women who feel Islam, as
it is practiced, subjugates them to male-domination in both public and
private spheres.

Her assassination is a threat directed at veiled but socially
active Islamist women, says Sibel Eraslan, an Islamist woman
intellectual known for her outspoken criticisms of male-domination in
the Islamist Virtue Party (FP) politics.

The gulf between the established religion and the heavenly message
has, throughout the ages, grown particularly against the women's
interests.

She expressed the problems of the Muslim women who have been
trapped between Islam and the mechanisms of modern and post-modern
world. She raised questions. Swinging in the air like a dry leaf she
was searching both her own voice and the holy message...She was
silenced for that, Eraslan says.

Yet, libertarian interpretations of Islam are not as welcomed by most
Islamist women.

She was ignorant of the Islamic lore, says Emine Senlikoglu, an
Islamist woman columnist. She was seeking to supplement Islam with
some alien blue-print ideologies.

Yet, she was not the only one to act in this manner. Why only she
was targeted? she asks. She has been a victim of
excessiveness.

The WiPC however, is determined not leave other critics to the mercy
of islamists. While (Turkish) president Suleyman Demirel has
acknowledged that some government agents may have had some past
connections to Hizbollah...Konca Kuris' death cannot be laid at
their door, the WiPC urges for special action in the honour of
Kuris for International Women's Day.

The Turkish government should do everything possible not only to
bring Kuris's murderers to justice, but also protect other writers
who are threatened by extremist groups, the WiPC said.

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